Shadowrun - Earthdawn - Poisoned Memories

by kubasik

  Prologue

  1

  Samael and Torran sat by the hearth of their home. The rainy season had come, and the nights had grown cool. More than the air, however, it was the last words of their mother's letter that chilled their flesh. The scrolls of the letter rested on a table between them.

  Samael, the better reader of the twos held the last sheet in his hands, its final words echoing inaudibly in the air between them. He held the scroll loosely, the way a cautions boy might hold the bones of a monkey found by chance out in the jungle.

  Glasses filled with rice wine, still half full, caught the fire's light and gleamed. The fire crackled, and every so often emitted a sharp pop. The fire had grown low, the hour late.

  The firelight, deep red, caressed the faces of the men. Shifting Wood.

  They might have been twins but for the scars. Thick, smooth hatch marks that cut this way and that across their flesh. The veins of broad jungle leaves. Both sat graven and thoughtful; Torran with a tinge of scowl, Samael with eyes bright. Each turned his mother's story over and over in his head.

  Torran's sword rested across his lap. It had become a fixture since the reading of the long letter had begun a few days earlier His right hand rested on the pommel now, one finger touching it gently. His feet in their thick boots rested on a stool Over the last six nights of reading the letter, Torran had slowly added one layer of protection after another, until now he was wearing a complete suit of leather armor bought from elves in the city of Bartertown outside the mountain kingdom of Throal.

  Samael rested more comfortably in cotton pants and a shirt that had been dyed into a festive swirl of greens and reds. He was a storyteller, and the cheerful clothing served his trade well. But the dark, thick wood of the house, the low firelight, the somber revelation of the letter all dimmed the happy aura in which he usually wrapped himself—as much an armor as Torran's leather—and made his clothes seem ridiculous.

  The walls of the house. Dark and red stained and foreboding. Thick walls. Walls to keep things out. When the twins had built their home, paying for it with plunder from countless adventures, they had agreed, silently, tacitly, that thick walls were needed.

  Something solid. Something to keep things out. Neither one had ever understood what it was that haunted them, but they never ceased to feel it. All their lives they had shared the silence of being hunted. A slow exchange between the two of them as they camped under the stars. A shared nod as a plaintive wind rustled the leaves of a savanna. And it was so terrible that they never spoke of it aloud.

  Yet the walls had never worked.

  The two men had carried their ghost into their home every night, in their heads. Hidden memories of their father. There was no escape.

  "We could have read the ending first," Torran said, his voice dry, strangely forced to be deep. "I told you."

  "That's not how she wanted to tell it," replied Samael. He wrapped the scroll back up.

  "Why did she go on so long?"

  "She had things she wanted us to understand."

  Without thinking, Torran brought his fingers to his face, touched his scars. He examined them carefully, as if they'd just appeared and he needed to acquaint himself with them.

  "Why didn't she tell us until now?'

  Samael put the wrapped scroll on the table, picked up his glass of wine. "I don't know. I think ... It would have been hard, of course. And perhaps she didn’t want to hurt us.”

  Torran lurched forward, his hand suddenly gripping the pommel of his blade. "He's still out there! He wants us to come see him!" He stood, crossed the hearth, his muscular, armored body a solid shadow before the flames.

  "He does."

  "He's insane.”

  "Maybe."

  Torran whirled suddenly, the sword up, a familiar rage on his face. Samael was not afraid. He knew it all too well. "MAYBE! What did you just read? Maybe! What is your problem this time? It's simple. He's insane."

  "The dragon, Mountainshadow, who sent us the first letter, he spoke highly of Father."

  "He's a dragon. They shred people for joy! I'm sure he and Father got along famously."

  Torran spread his arms wide, the firelight glinting up and down the blade. "It's been at the corner of my Mind all these years."

  "Yes."

  "I can't believe ... I can't believe ... Maybe she lied. She could have, you know. To make us …"

  "She didn't lie. You know that."

  "MAYBE!"

  "Feel it in yourself. Don't you see him now? Leaning over us." Samael began shaking. "I do. I see it. I see the knife ..."

  "Yes," Torran said harshly, cutting him off.

  Silence.

  "Are You going?" Samael asked.

  Without pause Torran answered, "No." Then he looked carefully at his brother. "You're not. You can't ..."

  "I am."

  "You can't.”

  "I am. I'm going."

  "He is an old man. He betrayed us. He left us. He did ..." Torran touched the scars.

  Samael stood. "In the morning. I'm leaving in the morning. If you want to come, if you change your Mind ..."

  Torran stepped up to his brother, put his hand on Samael's shoulder. They were identical twins, but Torran always imagined himself the older of the two. The older brother protecting the flighty, daydreaming younger one who could never keep his priorities straight and had never acquired the proper sense of the world's danger.

  "Don't go," he said, very serious.

  "Torran. He's our father. He wants to see us."

  "I'm not afraid."

  Samael lied for the sake of his brother. A man all of armor, all of weapons. “I know."

  "Don't go."

  "I want to."

  "Why? He ...”

  "He has a story to tell. I listen to stories."

  Torran lowered his head. You're such an idiot."

  "Yes."

  "A story."

  "He wants to tell us something.”

  "Why listen?"

  "It will be a good one. I have a sense about these things. Now I know it as a gift from him, this talent for stories."

  "And what did I get?"

  Samael could not answer. Torran looked down at his armor, uncomfortable; he turned the sword in his hand. He asked, "And if he's still insane? If he still wants to hurt you?"

  “I’ll kill him."

  2

  The dragon, Mountainshadow, in the letter, told them where they could find their father—if they wanted to. Just southeast of the city of Kratas, deep in the jungle, he lived in a small, strange house.

  Trees and flowers and vines formed its walls and roof, intertwined and cobbled together.

  Several of the branches and trunks had taken root again after being set in place, and sprouted green leaves.

  The house was a shamble of rooms jutting off one another. A main section rested on the ground, but then small shacks, attached at odd angles, jutted out. Then larger rooms grew atop those, stretching out into neighboring trees. Samael had to step back a moment to take it all in. It was much bigger than he had originally guessed. The rooms tumbled up with larger and larger proportions, like an inverted hill constructed of living wood. The home twisted and turned and grew into the trees above, so that it was impossible to know where the semblance of order began and the sprawl of jungle life ended.

  Finally he noticed a set of stairs, rising free and without railing, climbing up around a tree, spiraling up toward the jungle rooftop, and vanishing into the thick tangle of branches high above. At first he didn't know what that was about, then he remembered his father's obsession with searching the stars for meaning, mentioned in both Mountainshadow's s
tory and his mother's. Getting to the top of the jungle would be the only way J'role could examine the glittering points of light in the sky.

  The day was gray, and high above a drizzle fell. The thick canopy formed by the jungle growth kept Samael dry and turned the light around him an eerie gray-green. A dreamlike twilight where objects in the distance did not so much fade into darkness as simply lose their color and become insubstantial.

  A door waited, made of rough wood and set into the center of the main section of the house. A curling brown moss grew on it, and for a moment Samael thought he saw the door undulate, as if breathing.

  He smiled. The product of an overactive imagination.

  He shivered. He didn't know anymore; how much is passed on from parent to child?

  Singer, his magic sword found in the ruins of a shelter destroyed during the Scourge, tapped against his thigh as he walked toward the house.

  He raised his hand and knocked on the door.

  Silence. A noise. Something moving, scraping. Another noise—a pot falling, a clatter.

  A pause.

  Footsteps. The latch lifted from the inside. The door opened.

  J'role, old and thin—gaunt—stood there, his skin chalky gray. His eyes shone with the clarity of the stars against his murky flesh.

  Samael looked for scars on the man's flesh, saw none.

  His father stared down at him for a moment, curious, uncertain, intrigued. Beyond the man, Samael saw a maelstrom of clutter. Charts of the stars hung haphazardly on the walls, staked into the wood with knives. Treasure chests rested against chairs knocked over onto their sides. Silver and gold pieces lay scattered across the floor like dust.

  Cobwebs hung from the ceiling, and spiders scurried about as if excited by the arrival of a guest, finally, after all these years. Furniture, chairs and tables, were stacked up tightly in one corner. A stairway led up to one of the higher rooms. Stacks and stacks of star maps rested on the steps, making it look as if ascending the stairs would be as difficult as scaling a steep hill.

  As what had been a shadow nightmare for thirty years now became flesh, the sight of his father brought too many memories into sharp focus. A panic gripped him. Samael wanted to turn and run, but it was not in fear for his life. It was purely and simply a need to escape the situation. What was he doing here? What could he say?

  But he did not have to speak first. J'role, who as a boy had had no voice, smiled down, sudden recognition in his eyes, and greeted his son. He ushered Samael in.

  The two of them stood awkwardly for a few moments, J'role gesturing to the treasures he'd gathered but now had no desire to own. He was a thief and he stole. He couldn't help himself.

  J'role asked after Torran, and was disappointed to learn that his other son would not be joining them.

  Samael mentioned that neither would Releana be coming. Upon hearing this, the old man turned away and asked if Samael would like some tea. He accepted, and soon father and son had settled down before the hearth, teacups in hand, the fire warming them.

  Samael kept his sword with him, on his lap. His father noticed. Commented. The son only smiled, tightlipped. J'role nodded, knowing. He swallowed. He understood Samael knew, what their meeting was about. The sword rested between them, a barrier to be breached before any tenderness of touch.

  Samael said, "You wanted to tell me something?"

  J'role cleared his throat.

  PART ONE

  New Boy, Old Magician

  1

  I stood on the platform I'd built at the top of the jungle. Just over a year ago. Stared at the stars, the lot of them, still and perfect above me. A tableau of order. They moved, but slowly. Not like our own frantic thoughts, but in a stately procession. Comprehensible.

  One can see the stars. Take them in. Map them.

  I did that. Often. It kept me whole. Or busy. Calmed my thoughts. I sat at a desk on the platform, stylus in hand gripped so tight my fingers often numbed, marking out the stars.

  Their positions. Noting shooting stars, the loose thoughts of the universe. A fixed point of light pried from its proper place. Three of them that night. Terrified me. Things had come unstuck in my head years earlier, and I so desperately needed to know that at least the stars would stay in place. So I sat there body tight, a child waiting for the unpredictable slap of an angry parent.

  The sound of movement far below floated up to me, soft as a butterfly's passage. In the jungle, one listens; each sound a clue to survival. I heard leaves swishing, a branch snap.

  A tiger, hunting? Too clumsy. People? I stood. Had I been found? The threat lay in my head, one snake among many, always coiling and writhing in my thoughts.

  Voices now, calling. Shouts. "Over there!" The scream of a boy. "No! Please!"

  Here and there, along my flesh, the prickly sensation of panic. I did not wonder who these people were. What mattered was that a child was in danger. What greater dilemma?

  I had to do something. But—BUT would I be a greater threat than the danger the child was running from? I'd not harmed any child since you and Torran during the Theran War.

  Still, the snakes writhed.

  I stood, poised like a hunting dog, listening. Around me, the canopy of thick jungle leaves, a strange, frozen lake of black waves. The implacable stars above. Be I still, I told myself. Be as the stars. To take action is to risk death. Not the death of the flesh, which I would have welcomed. The death of safety.

  Far below, the shouts came closer, grew louder. He was fast, this boy. He deserved a chance.

  I sprang for the steps, bounded down them toward a room some forty feet off the ground.

  No sound made. Thief magic cloaked me. A mantle of shadows. Comfort. To be invisible! There is nothing so wonderful as not to be known! To slip into the cracks of nature and become no more than a rock or a tree to the eyes of other people.

  I made a dive for the door leading into the house, rolled inside, leaped up, and grabbed a sword that hung on the wall. A fight! Things began snapping in my body, a cacophony of muscles waking up, brilliant and shiny. Ready for battle.

  Down the stairs of the house, as silent as ever. Laughing to myself. I was my own secret.

  Through the front door. The air warmer under the canopy of leaves. Thicker. Stifled. A crack of branches ahead. "Spread out!" someone shouted. Old. A fish hook in my brain, that voice. Sharp, but too thin to be identified. Torches, blotches of glowing blood, bobbed in and out from behind trees. Patches of flesh revealed in the harsh light, an elf, a few men. They fanned out.

  My house, built room by room amid the trees, covered now with vines, blended into the night forest. They moved on, about a hundred yards off, slowly, beating their way through the thick brush. Searching.

  The boy was out there. Somewhere. Ahead of the hunters. The soft, wet ground only gave the slightest sigh as I ran on. My ancient legs took me from one swift leap to the next.

  The thief magic surrounded me, guided me. I turned and twisted and ducked, missing leaves and branches by a hair's breadth. Hide from the hunters, I thought. That's where the magic's safety could help.

  I had to bury my desire to help the boy. Had to trick the magic. Not easy, but possible.

  Dangerous. Told myself over and over I didn't want to help him. He could prove useful.

  Valuable. If they were chasing him, he must have money. Or could lead to money. Or could create money. Somehow.

  Tell the thief magic you don't care, only that you want. I've lived my whole life that way.

  I could kill him if I believed it too much. I might get too selfish. Balance was the key. To think about the boy as a means to my own fortune, but not too much. I didn't want to hurt him, but then, I hadn't reached him yet. I f I did and he wore a jeweled crown and I realized I wanted it, the magic coursing through my muscles making me desirous for wealth, I could do anything to him to get what I wanted.

  Wealth I couldn't use. Wealth I didn't need.

  The shouts rolled further
and further away. My breathing increased. Raspy, old breathing thick in my ears. I stopped. Listened. The snap of a branch. Ahead, faint, the sound of hard breathing. The boy. He tried to stifle the noise. I thought, for a moment, that the boy was me fifty years earlier, hiding from those who wanted the Longing Ring. It, his breathing, was at corpse raised by a nethermancer, desperate for true life.

  I moved closer. Slower now. Tricks had been set for me before. Was this all a ruse?

  Absurd, perhaps, but solipsism speaks tender whispers to the man with no friends.

  The hunters approached. Shouted instructions and agreement. Soft mumbling of insubordination. "Too late for this Sort thing." "We're in a jungle for the sake of the Passions." City dwellers, and they weren't particularly fond of each other. Good.